Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christ the King Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christ the King Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Christ the King Daniel 7.9-10, 13, 14 Revelation 1.4b-8 John 18.33-37 Philip Pullman’s brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy ends with the words ‘and then we’ll build . . . The republic of heaven.’ This is the vision that Lyra holds out to us after all she has learned and suffered…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Easter Day Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Easter Day Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Easter Day Isaiah 25.6-9 Philippians 15.1–11 Mark 16.1-8 After all the horror, and the crowds and the noise of the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, this chapter of Mark’s Gospel starts quietly. We have already seen these women at the crucifixion scene, but we hardly noticed them there…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christmas Day Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christmas Day Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Christmas Day Isaiah 62.6–12 Titus 3.4–7 Luke 2.1–20 In these verses from Isaiah there is a great sense of subdued excitement, of restlessness, of purposeful movement a little distance away, as the dawn breaks. Actually, this would probably describe almost any household with chil…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Second Sunday of Epiphany 1 Samuel 3.1–10 Revelation 5.1–10 John 1.43–51 The beginning of chapter 3 of 1 Samuel says, in a very matter-of- fact way, ‘the word of the Lord was rare in those days.’ 1 Samuel has already begun to paint a picture – centred round Eli and the once-f…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Christmas Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Christmas Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The First Sunday of Christmas Isaiah 61.10—62.3 Galatians 4.4 –7 Luke 2.15–21 Galatians is one of the most moving of all Paul’s epistles. Paul is fighting for his calling in this epistle. The fight is partly for himself, because if he is wrong, and God has not called him to be an…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Baptism of Christ - The First Sunday of Epiphany Genesis 1.1–5 Acts 19.1–7 Mark 1.4–11 What is nothingness? We have no concept of it. Our image of it consists of the absence of things that we can picture and describe, which is very different from the nothingness before creati…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 8.26-40 1John 4.7-21 John 15.1-8 The writings of John, both in the Gospel and the epistles, are bafflingly determined not to come down on one side or the other of the ‘chicken or egg’ question. Which comes first, love of God or love of our neighbou…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 4.5-12 1John 3.16-24 John 10.11-18 Today’s readings are deeply challenging. Christian mission has sometimes been done as though determined to prove that we are right and everyone else is wrong, whereas all of today’s writers think that Christians …
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Lent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Second Sunday of Lent Genesis 17.1–7, 15, 16 Romans 4.13–25 Mark 8.31–38 The Old Testament readings for Lent this year are encouraging us to think about covenants. Last week we had the covenant with Noah, this week we have Abraham, and next week – let me give you a sneak prev…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Third Sunday of Lent Exodus 20.1-17 1 Corinthians 1.18-25 John 2.13-22 Are Exodus and 1 Corinthians in direct conflict with each other? Do they give wholly irreconcilable pictures of the nature of God and our response to it? The God of the Ten Commandments is, surely, a God w…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The First Sunday of Lent Genesis 9.8–17 1 Peter 3.18–22 Mark 1.9–15 When God makes his covenant with creation after the flood, it is a covenant not just with Noah and his family, or even with all future human beings, but with ‘every living creature that is with you’ (v. 10). What…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Third Sunday of Epiphany Genesis 14.17–20 Revelation 19.6–10 John 2.1–11 We are created to praise God. We cannot trulynd our existence in any other way, and neither can the created world, which longs to re-echo to the sound of human voices raised in songs of praise to their c…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany Deuteronomy 18.15–20 Revelation 12.1–5a Mark 1.21–28 ‘If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this greatre, I will die’ (Deuteronomy 18.16). This, according to Deuteronomy, is the source of prophecy. The people of God hav…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 10 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 10 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 10 Amos 7: 7-15 Ephesians-1: 3-14 Mark 6: 14-29 ‘The letter to the Ephesians sets the life of the Christian Church in the context of the cosmic plan of God. The letter will go on to give quite detailed advice about how Christians should live together, day to day, but it is…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 1 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 1 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 1 Isaiah 40.21–31 1 Corinthians 9.16–23 Mark 1.29–39 There are two complicated, separate yet related themes running through today’s readings. The first is to do with proclamation – all three passages talk about the ways in which God makes himself known to us. The second is…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 2 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 2 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 2 2 Kings 5.1–14 1 Corinthians 9.24–27 Mark 1.40–45 Mark’s Gospel is almost certainly the oldest of the four Gospels. Matthew and Luke seem to know it and depend upon it for some of their information, though they do also have independent sources of their own. It is possibl…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 12 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 12 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 12 2 Kings 4. 42-44 Ephesians 3: 14-21 John 6: 1-21 The story of the feeding of the five thousand is found in all four Gospels, making it one of the best attested of Jesus’s miracles. John’s Gospel sometimes uses memories and stories that clearly come from different source…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 21 Year B